Bill Shields

Bill Shields was a Navy SEAL in the Can Tho Village in Vietnam for three years. He is the author of several collections of poetry: POST-VIETNAM STRESS SYNDROME, NAM, DRINKING GASOLINE IN HELL, (now collected in HUMAN SHRAPNEL) from 2.13.61 publications, and LIFETAKER, also from 2.13.61.

ABATTOIR

I hadn't been home from the Nam for 23 minutes
before a kid my own age stuck his middle finger
in my face & called me asshole
my own sister didn't speak to me for five years
& my mother kept a full tank of gas in her Plymouth
for a one way ride to the VA hospital in Pittsburgh
I let the war lick my guts quietly
& without an audience
but when my daughter died from my exposure to Agent Orange
I bought a typewriter & pounded pure fire
out of its keys till it broke
& I bought another one
I thought if I shared blood with a reader
my goddamn hells would be easier to walk thru barefoot
but they aren't

WIFE

I see you in the mornings your hands shaking coffee
a mild cigarette hanging limp forgotten & lit
your eyes wired into the high-voltage of last night's dreams
bulging from the horror of my war
There is nothing I can do
my wounded have filled the beds of a hundred apartments
their blood trails have followed me from California
to Pennsylvania
& just this morning I found two more marines in our back
bedroom hanging in the concertina
& I pulled the covers over their eyes

HELL MUST BE FULL--THE DEAD ARE WALKING THE EARTH

walking thru minefields of my desire
my boots slosh & leak blood

I've become my own ghost

no shadows where I run the nights thru
the taste of the blade in my throat
& the silence of the dead

I slip my fingers thru a mirror
& pull out the beating heart
of a man I once knew so well

that I killed him

FLOORPLAN TO A LEASE

the upstairs neighbors woke me
night after night
blood- thick screams dropped me
to my knees
adrenalin
closing my throat
as I realized it was my voice
waking the neighbor

FOR MY DAUGHTERS

I hope you'll remember that not all men
have scars on their necks & shrapnel
buried in their faces
The black of night is not the screams of a man
caught forever in a war
but a time for soft words & even softer hands
Bury my sadness & anger out in the back yard
with the dead pets & don't mark it with a cross
& may your children never fear Agent Orange
passed down genetically to their little bodies
by a grandfather who's already forgotten himself

THERE NO METAPHOR FOR THE PAIN

thousands of us live with disemboweled children
clung to our memories feshly-lit

the napalm burns in our dreams as killing
the little people out there, in the treeline

where the blackened bodies lay contorted
counted & forgotten

& after all these years, I don't care
if you can wazzu forgive me because

 

I'll never forgive myself

TOUR OF DUTY

I held onto the rail with both hands
my daughter laying beneath dwarfed
by an adult's hospital bed
the bruises
from countless IV's ran up her arm
& straight back to Vietnam
where I watched the dioxin
cut the jungle
& eat the
children
of the Viet Cong

then devour
mine

WE CIRCLE ONE ANOTHER

I spent years hanging my head on the dead
Vietnam stayed hidden in my blood & my shame
No one & by that I mean no one had an ear
for ten minutes of brillant memories
My veteran friends put the bottle in their mouth
or a shotgun & finished out the war
I kept my silence from funeral parlor-to-funeral parlor
& I'm still waiting

STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART

I've never bullshitted myself
these last twenty years have been a waste of my flesh
The last time I truly lived was five minutes
into a firefight so utterly gruesome
that even the muddy MeKong ran red with blood
I've lived to die
My marriages & my children should be names
on the Vietnam Veterans Wall
the Wall I cannot face
alive

SUCKING IN THE BLUES THROUGH A CHIPPED NOSE

I got dressed again & went to bed, my pants dead against the sheet the gun was in the dresser & my bowie knife left on the kitchen table
closed my eyes till the dead people lit me up

there are movies that run till dawn
...no commercials
...no mercy

all the time in my world
dying slow with my dirty socks

THE TRUE TASTE OF AN ASSHOLE

I hate my whole fucking generation of baby bumpers
especially the men, the spineless bastards suck on a greed tit
the ex-hippie chick is a lump in a bowl of bland gravy
fuck the whole bunch of 'em

if you're in your forties & male
best be a Nam vet to walk in this house & get a handshake
this is wrong & I don't care
every year I lose another friend & no one is stepping in

one eye on the mirror
one eye on the floor

killing